Beauty Underneath
by Donna Aminta of the Black Rose
Summary: We all have the standard interpretation of The Beauty Underneath, but what if a very different story lurked behind a seemingly innocent piece of music.


The Beauty Underneath Revisited:

The Angel of Death

Disclaimer:

All Characters are not mine, Artimus included. She belongs to my muse for this piece, Agon Dy.

Summary:

We all have the standard interpretation of The Beauty Underneath, but what if a very different story lurked behind a seemingly innocent piece of music.

Author's Note:

This lovely little one shot stemmed from an idea of an alternate interpretation of The Beauty Underneath by a very dear friend of mine, Agon Dy; an idea that I've finally taken the notion to put to paper. A few things you should know to help this along a bit:

First. This takes place about six years after LND. Christine has stayed with Erik willingly, Raoul is not in the picture, and we know absolutely for certain that Gustav is theirs.

Second, about Artimus—a shifter who has imprinted on Gustav. At this point their relationship is, basically, just beginning, and this excerpt comes from a letter he is sending to her before a rather testing experience.

Third, I wish to dedicate this lovely piece to the already afore mentioned muse, Agon Dy. Here you are darling. A version of Phantom that doesn't make you want to cringe. Do have fun.

Last, if you're brave enough to do this and stay open minded enough with it, play Beauty Underneath on repeat while you read this.

I hope that's enough information for you all to follow this, and if it's not, do let me know, and I'll give you whatever else you need. Otherwise read, review—unless you want to flame—and enjoy.

Aminta

Excerpted from the correspondences of Gustav Dessler

To: Artimus de la Lune

November 30th, 2010

My dearest,

It is often said that a little inspiration goes a long way, and as you have often questioned me concerning how I became what I am, I offer to you these papers. I caution you, at the very least, to keep them locked away after you have read them, and if you wish to do me greater justice, to burn them. The information contained within is something that must never be seen by anyone else's eyes.

…

Leather and cold steel, the mixture was heady… intoxicating. I thought the rush that came when my fingers touched the ivory keys of father's piano could never be equaled, but I had been most assuredly and most sadly mistakened.

My leather clad hand curled and uncurled around the hilt of the heavy blade, testing it. For what, I wasn't certain at the time, but my hands seemed more knowledgeable than my sixteen years.

I have often been asked, in the years since, if there was any fear in those first moments, and depending on the company I kept at the time, I would often swear to be completely unfamiliar with the emotion. This, though I force myself to admit it even still, was not the case. I was terrified.

What if father found me, I remembered thinking. He would be none too pleased to find that such a blade had gone missing and was now in my hands, and mother, with her all too delicate constitutions, what would she say, what would she think I intended to do with it? Better still, what did I intend to do with it? I wasn't certain of the answer to that myself.

A barely audible creek, the lightest of steps, he was close, and I'd been caught. I never knew how mother still gasped at his illusions; how she could never hear him, feel him, when I could tell exactly where he was at any given moment.

"Gustav," his voice was cold, dangerous, unyielding, and while it should have made me shiver as it had so many times, I only straightened prepared for his strike.

"Oui, mon pere?" I asked, my tone a mirror of his own.

"My blade…?"

I made no attempt to answer, only held out my left hand, the one that was curled around the hilt, letting him examine my prize.

"I see," he answered gravely, a new look crossing his face, "and how does it feel?"

Was this some sort of trick question, and if so, what was he after? His eyes were pressing me, daring me not to answer, and I fought my urges to become childlike under that incredulous gaze.

"It feels… it feels like the music, consuming, possessing, but yet, it is so much more." I answered almost automatically.

The look in his eyes would have made me beg for mercy and run to the safety of mother's skirts if I had been a weaker creature, but I knew I had dug the hole and must follow through with whatever he saw fit to do with me.

A single gesture was the only warning to follow him I received before he vanished, nearly at a run from the room. I lost track of how many floors we ran down, but by the time he stopped, I was in a part of the house I had never seen before. Thus was the nature of my father, nothing was ever as it seemed.

"I must confess I wondered if this would be the case, as I watched your nature progress," he admitted softly.

"Mon pere?" I questioned. He was doing it again; assuming any and everyone knew what he was thinking and leaving me only with cryptic half answers. Something that, many times, I have been told I inherited, to the despair of those closest to me.

"In a way," he began carefully, "Your mother and I have wronged you by not telling you all of my past. You know of The Phantom, you know of our story, but never once have I told you about my time in Persia and the Angel of Death."

"Qu'est-ce que c'est ça?" I asked, confused. Persia… the Angel of Death… What the hell did this have to do with me stealing his blade? He was losing me and fast.

"The summer of 1876 was more insufferable than any I had seen thus far, and made even more sweltering by the heat and sweat that pooled beneath the mask I refused to remove, even before my mentor…"

There was a point to this story. There had to be, or I was going to be several shades of angry. Deciding I wasn't going to get free of his recitation any time soon, I settled back into a chair, prepared for whatever was coming.

"The Shah's palace had been long finished, and I thought my time in the cursed place was long near over. But it was then that I met her…

She was a brutal woman, the Shah's mother, a sadistic one and a voyeur of tortures, and she had decided someone with my skill could learn to serve her sadistic fantasies. Day after day, I became an architect of an entirely different sort, designing chambers of tortures, designing torture carried out by my own hand. The Angel of Death, I was often called, alternated with The Prince of Stranglers, as I favored the cat gut noose— the Punjab—, a weapon unique to that region.

I never saw myself as a killer, though I had done so from time to time, but during those days, those "rosy hours of Mazanderran", I killed with a beautiful lustful pleasure which intoxicated me like no drink or substance I had ever known, and I had known many."

My mouth dropped to the floor, and I fell speechless... overwhelmed by this new information.

"Are you saying I… I…?" I couldn't say it, I couldn't accept it. My own father attempted to tell me that I would take pleasure in taking the lives of others. This couldn't be possible, could it?

"It sings for you, doesn't it?" he asked as he stroked the blade like a long lost lover. "You hear the song that no one else can hear when it is in your hands."

I nodded weakly, my mind racing a million heartbeats a minute, as I too stroked the beautifully lethal object.

"Get up," he instructed coldly, "and take the blade."

I hesitated, the old terror beginning to grip me again, but when I saw him whip the noose out from beneath his cloak, I realized I had no choice.

"You fear me?" he asked coldly.

"I fear what you tell me I am," I managed weakly.

There was a split second's warning for me, as I watched him prepare to throw the delicate looking cord about my neck but that split second wasn't enough. In the next moment, I was thrown to the cold stone floor, writhing in panic as the noose tightened and left me gasping for air.

He released me slowly as the glaze of focus left his tawny eyes, and I picked myself up from the floor.

"Where were you," he asked me, and his voice was tender again.

"Je ne sais pas," I confessed honestly.

"You must focus," he warned, "Those daydreams are good for nothing save getting you killed."

I straightened myself, and he allowed me the briefest of moments to return from my wanderings before the noose flew again. This time I was ready, the blade flashed in my hand, cutting down the cord, and before I knew exactly what happened, the knife was being lunged toward his throat as a snarl like nothing that had ever left my lips filled the room.

His eyes glowed and flashed, and without a single word being spoken between us, I could tell he was pleased with me. This fact sent me reeling in pleasure. That fight must have lasted for hours, though the true timing of it escapes me now.

Each day for a year or so after that, the training continued, and then the testing came. He told me, when his mentor had given him the same test, it had been days before he finished, and there was talk that he might not have even survived, but I can still remember the utter childish pleasure in those golden eyes when I finished in a mere matter of hours and was forced to take my oaths upon his blade. It was a year after that when my mother finally came to terms with the fact that she had been cursed, as she often viewed it, with a second Angel of Death.

We have brought her to a state of, at the very least, tolerance now, but I fear lest she will never truly cease her worryings over either of us. Though, as my father's prime ends, he consents more and more to remain with her in favor of sending me to perform what was once his greatest pleasure.

…

Though I know this has surely given you much to ponder, my darling, I do hope that it will provide some solace for you in soothing the fears that you too must conquer tonight. I wish you the best of luck.

I remain, yours forever in love,

G.


End file.
